Emperor Films’
successful sale of Deadly Commando/Suicide Force (1981) to Germany’s
Atlas International prompted them to approach Atlas two years later,
in true Filipino form, with essentially a carbon copy of their
previous hit, dragging along much of its cast and crew. Once again,
Army Commander Johnny Wilson sends a squad of black-clad commandos to
rescue kidnapped person-of-interest from a rebel commander played by
Rodolfo “Boy” Garcia; this time he is self-styled People’s
Revolution leader Karamat, suffering from delusions of his own
divinity, who snatches the province’s Governor and his daughter and
drags them back to his mountain lair. Wilson charges Captain Barone
(60s cowboy star Jun Aristorenas) to reactivate his Death Raiders, a
boozing and brawling bunch consisting of three of the Pinoy Bruce
Lees – Ramon Zamora, Ulysses Tzan and Robert Lee – plus the Man
Mountain from Mindanao, Mohamad Faizal. From a cast well-versed in
comic action films, you’d expect some broad comedy moments –
Ulysses Tzan recreating his Drunken Master routine from Mantis Boxer
(1979) during a street fight, for instance, and the Raiders’
room-trawling during their rescue of Tzan’s girlfriend from a busy
brothel. It’s also a much less one-dimensional film than Deadly
Commando, with more welcoming serves of sleaze and blood, more
fleshed-out characters, and imaginatively shot bang-bang scenes.
George Estregan is also back as Karamat’s reluctant second in
command working to bring down the lunatic cult leader down, alongside
Karamat’s son Donald, played by teenage pin-up Joel Alano, who
would pass away from a heart attack in 1986 aged only 21. Not bad.

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HERR LEAVOLD

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines’ pyramid of power.

He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.